Yes / This article presents midwives' views and experiences of flexible working and work-life balance. Both flexible working and work-life balance are important contemporary agendas within midwifery and can have both positive and negative consequences for midwives. Full-time midwives and those without caring commitments feel disadvantaged by flexible working and work-life balance policies as they have to fit when they work around part-time midwives and are increasingly expected to cover extra work. They feel their work-life balance is marginalised and this is fuelling discontent and resentment among midwives and leading to divisions between full and part-time staff that reinforce flexibility stigma. Although flexible working and work-life balance are important for recruiting and retaining midwives they are part of the ongoing tensions and challenges for midwives and the midwifery profession. Keywords flexibility stigma, flexible working, full-time work, marginalisation, midwives, National Health Service,

This essay examines the impact of employees' working hours on genderequality. There is a problem linked to part-time and full-time work alongwith gender equality, which leads to that significantly more women workspart-time than men do. The reason to this is partially because the welfareindustry is female-dominated and infused by part-time employment, andbecause of the uneven distribution of roles between the sexes. A new rule ofpresumption has been formulated in the Employment Protection Act(1982:80) which stipulates that all employment contracts apply for full-timework, unless agreed otherwise. The purpose of this essay is to investigate theprovision of full-time as the norm and whether an extension of workinghours will promote equality in the labor market. A shortening of workinghours is presented as another possible solution to the gender equalityproblem and after that, both possibilities get analyzed with their pros andcons and their relevant legislation. To investigate whether full-time work as a norm will improve genderequality, research results from previous full-time projects are compared. Insummary, the results of this essay show that full-time work as a norm islikely to be a successful equality tool, but previous research has shown thatsupplementary measures will then be required. Among other things, it will berequired that the government works to remove unfavorable working hoursand that the welfare professions become more sought after among men.Another important measure is to work more actively to remove the unevengender distribution around unpaid domestic and care work. This is importantbecause it is something that leads to many women not getting their lifepuzzle together and therefore choosing to work part-time instead of full-timein order to have more time to spare